Kyle had been bluffing at first when he claimed the meta for the game was to form large guilds, but it didn’t seem far from the truth. The system of constructing buildings seemed to incentivise gathering in communities. As they built, more people started to trickle into the budding village Dvorak insisted on calling “Crystopia”, after the transcendance crystal floating in the center.

Turns out Lumen was a professional E-sports gamer. He had escaped his pod by killing all of his podmates and climbing the rope that fell. He was lured by the fantasy the tiger-like Jakarna race represented, becoming a Jakarna Rogue. He changed his name to match the screen-name he had given Kyle. Because Kyle had never sent him a party invite, he never got to see Lumen’s real name, which struck Kyle as sad.

Also, Mia had apparently changed her name to “Adrianne Darkblade” while in the crystal; Kyle hadn’t noticed until later, when he saw that her name appeared different in the party menu. Kyle made an intentional effort to never call her that. “Mia” was fine.

Kyle tried hard to keep his eyes on the edge of the forest. He wanted to be the first to greet any newcomers, to try and make a good first impression, before Mia scared anyone away by being too competitive or aggressive or before Dvorak scared anybody away by being… Dvorak.

One of Lumen’s podmates, a man named Braden, actually came to the crystal the following day. Lumen ran to the man and apologized, saying he wouldn’t have killed his team-mates if he knew the meta. Lumen asked for forgiveness with plausible sincerity. The new man, Braden, seemed to take the apology pretty well, though Kyle did notice him keeping an eye on Lumen more often than not.

This interaction made Kyle feel particularly hopeful; Lumen could have been a frightening rival had he not “learned the meta” when he did. As it stood, he was instead trying to rally their “team” to “represent North America” in the competition, and encouraged everybody to “give it their all” to win together. He wasn’t above repetitive labor, either. In particular, he prided himself on being a dead-shot hunter always able to provide food for the town. He constantly tried to explain to others the idiosyncrasies of the bow he was using, though as the only rogue in the group, his explanations fell on mostly deaf ears.

One of the fallen people from Dvorak’s pod, a shy, slight, olive-skinned girl, came to the crystal the same day. Dvorak immediately declared that he would protect her from the “brutish savagery of the brutish savage” that had killed her, and insisted she touch the crystal. She wordlessly complied, shaking somewhat, and came out as an elven acolyte. Dvorak announced he would build the girl a house, and the girl nodded sullenly, warily observing the people around her.

For the first couple of days, they mostly chopped trees and built buildings. Depending on who was doing what, they’d rearrange parties so people doing similar activities near each other could keep tabs on each other’s health bars. Sadly, parties only went up to five people, so they couldn’t all be in a party all the time.

Mia grumbled a lot and was prone to taking naps, which annoyed Kyle. When she did collect wood, she would often chop alone, trying to figure out which trees produced the most wood for as little effort as possible and seeking out those trees specifically. Mia said she was “speedrunning” her resource gathering. Kyle thought she was just lazy. To blow off steam, Mia would borrow one of the bows Lumen crafted and hunt for sport. Or “practice”, as she called it.

Mia also had some definite opinions about the way the town should be organized, but Kyle managed to convince her and the rest of the group that Jacob should be the town planner, being the only one with architecture as his skill. To his credit, Jacob took full ownership of his new role. Without even being prompted by Kyle, he went in to the help files, found the requirements for all the buildings, and tried to create a town plan so that all the buildings that could possibly be built would fit in the clearing in a logical organized way, with thematically similar buildings near each other and buildings arranged as conveniently as possible for those who lived in the village. His plan even included room for thirty houses, which could be expanded with multiple stories and turned into apartments if needed. Jacob sketched the town plan out in the dirt in one corner of the clearing and pleaded with everybody not to step on it.

This style of planning had the unintended side effect that all the “low-tier’ buildings they could build with the equipment they currently had were spaced out far enough apart to be aggravating.

“What’s the hell is up with this?” Mia demanded, her elven frame towering over the four-foot halfling. “To get to the tannery, do I really need to walk half-way across the clearing? Why can’t it be, like, right here?”

“Because that’s where the arena goes,” Jacob said. “I figured you’d like living next to the arena, being all interested in combat and stuff.”

“Okay fine. Then why isn’t the tannery, say, here?”

“Because that’s where the Apothecary is. It needs to go next to the arena so people can get healed up after they fight.”

“Correction,” interjected Dvorak. “There is, in fact, not an apothecary there. An oversight which I find most troubling. You want healing potions, don’t you?”

“Yes, but Mia wanted leather armor, so I had to get this tannery set up first. And after that, I’ve got to build a well or you’ll have no water for brewing, and we really need to get a smeltery up and running eventually because we need metal for like everything. Or is it a bloomery we need? I forget which comes first…”

“A bloomery? Could we work on that? I could use more rare flowers.” Dvorak said.

“What? No, A bloomery is a place for making Bronze. Or Iron. Or copper. Or something. A metal that we’re gonna need.”

“Guys, leave Jacob alone,” Kyle said, arriving at the point of altercation. “He’s got the help docs on advanced architecture, we don’t. Let him plan stuff. When it’s done, it’ll be great, I promise.”

“It’s still stupid that every time I kill one of these pointy-legged poké-deer, I’ve got to drag the meat all the way to my house over here but the hide all the way to the tannery over there,” Mia complained. “They should be closer.”

“Well yeah, I thought of that. The smokehouse is going to be near the tannery, which’ll be convenient, but I think we’ve all decided that a smokehouse is a low priority right now, right? So…”

Braden, a dwarf ever since touching the crystal, shook his head as he approached. “Do you even know how a tannery works, girl? Trust me, you probably don’t want to live next to one.” Braden tapped his crystal and started unloading wood from his inventory onto the ground in front of Jacob.

“What?” Asked Mia. “Why not?”

“You tan leather by soaking it in urine,” Braden said, smiling. “You want to make bets on how realistic leatherworking is in this game? Because I sure don’t. We can smell in this game, you know?” He began walking back off towards the forest, chuckling.